


soothe my soul so beautiful

by psycheDahlia



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Accidental Stimulation, Intoxication, M/M, Marijuana, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mud, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Recreational Drug Use, Sexual Tension, Shower Sex, Smoking, Undressing, Wet Clothing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 12:25:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14694195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psycheDahlia/pseuds/psycheDahlia
Summary: He’s high as fuck and about as filthy as a person can be, but for a split-second he looks just sort of small and pitiful. “Please, Dennis?” Charlie says, and it’s the same look that gets Dennis every goddamn time.Everygoddamntime.Dennis sighs, stepping aside to clear the doorway. “Fuck it. Just don’t touch anything.”(Charlie comes over in need of some assistance. Dennis does his semi-disgruntled best to help.)





	soothe my soul so beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from "calm me down" by mother mother and like, just go listen to that song seriously because tbh it's the mood its the inspiration it's the title it's everything

Rays of light stream through the gap between the curtain and the window frame. The smoke seems to seek the rays out, Dennis thinks, like it enjoys curling up through the rays the way cats like to sleep in warm sunlight, the rays warm like coffee, the smoke the cream, smoke curling like cream in hot coffee, smoke in sunlight...

It’s 7pm on a humid mid-summer Friday in Philadelphia, PA and Dennis is pleasantly, calmingly stoned.

The thing is, Dennis typically enjoys being roommates with Mac. He wouldn’t ever say that to Mac’s face, but he does. And more than that, he enjoys their closeness - people could mock them all they wanted, but he knows the benefits of having someone practically chained to your side, someone who knows what you needed before you did, someone who knows you so...intimately.

But sometimes he likes it when the chain between the two of them gets a little longer, and the main tie holding them together isn’t physical proximity but screens and satellites. This time, Mac’s run off to do some scheme or another, some dumb idea that Dee had and managed to persuade Mac to go along with her on. Dennis doesn’t recall the scheme but he does recall the way it became immediately obvious it would require being gone at least overnight. It may actually have been a decent idea, Dennis recalls, but it was Dee’s idea and it was all too easy to brush off, particularly when the reward for said brushoff was a night alone in the apartment, able to do all the things Mac reacted so obnoxiously to that Dennis had long since stopped doing them in front of him.

Like smoking weed in the living room, for example. Dennis taps the tip of the joint on an ashtray he’d unearthed from a box under his bed. God, it’s been too long. The pleasant, soothing burn in his throat, the cloudiness in his skull. He’s missed it.

“Fuck, I can’t…”

Dennis frowns when he hears Charlie’s voice, because the heavy slowness in Charlie’s voice sure sounds like he’s been huffing glue or worse, and if Charlie’s a wild card when he’s sober, he’s ten solid spaces to the left on the grid of _reality_ when he’s real high, and Dennis really wasn’t planning for anyone to come over in the first place; the whole point of sending Mac off was to have a night to himself. Dennis can feel the stinging itch of irritation blooming up around his temples, his own high ebbing as he realizes how likely it’s becoming that he’s going to have to deal with Charlie’s.

“Forgot what to, what do I...to the door?”

Dennis frowns, furrowing his brow and rubbing at the back of his neck. “Uh, I dunno, knock on it? With your fist?”

A long pause, then Charlie starts ‘knocking’ hard enough that Dennis startles right up off the couch, and spaced out strangely - uneven spaces of time between knocks, and far too long apart. So Dennis is fairly certain Charlie is _punching his door_ , further evidenced when Charlie starts making these strained grunting noises after each punch around the third or fourth time - he’s punching Dennis’s door so hard it’s starting to hurt his fist.

Irritation in full bloom, Dennis snubs the joint out, storms across the room, throws the door open, and…oh, wow.

“Charlie, what in the literal absolute lord Jesus fuck did you  _do_?!”

His feet are bare and the soles are covered in white powder, which is presumably why there are white footprints staggering and zig-zagging down Dennis’s hall. Some of them start going the wrong direction about two thirds of the way down, and then clumsily shuffle back around and stumble their way until they stop right where Charlie’s standing now. Dennis isn’t sure if that means that Charlie got confused and started going the wrong way, or at one point reconsidered coming over, or if he just completely forgot what he was doing altogether.

The white powder is caked up around his feet, his shins bare up to just below the knee where his jeans have been very jaggedly, unevenly cut off - Dennis isn’t sure if that’s part of what happened tonight or just one of Charlie’s often baffling fashion choices - and drenched in what Dennis _prays_ is water up to the mid-thigh. From mid-thigh and up, he’s instead absolutely soaked with (and again, Dennis is just going by sight and prayer here) mud, causing all the fabric to cling awkwardly to Charlie’s skin, clinging tight in some places and weighed down away from his body in others. In many spots the mud also contains what Dennis can only assume to be dandelion tufts and...glitter? Maybe? _Hopefully?_

There’s far less mud on Charlie’s face than there is on the rest of him. It tapers off just above his shirt collar but there are still splashes there: one on his chin, one off to the side on his forehead just above his left eyebrow, four tiny smudges and then a bigger, lower smudge on his left cheek, like he touched his face with his hand, and a couple small splatter marks along his right cheekbone, like extra, larger, lighter freckles.

His eyes are wide and red-rimmed, spacey and unfocused, with just a _hint_ of greenish iris left to surround the blown-out pupil. He’s alternating between licking his lips and smiling dazedly at nothing in particular, and at first he keeps absently playing with his already incredibly messy hair, but then as he’s standing there he finds a leaf tangled in the strands and can’t stop fiddling with _that_ , rolling it between his fingertips.

Dennis snaps his fingers in front of Charlie’s face. There’s a brief moment of pause, then Charlie looks around as if trying to place a sound he’d barely heard in the far distance. His face pinches up, confused, like it’s on the tip of his tongue but he can’t _quite_ figure out what the sound might’ve been. Dennis sighs.

“Charlie,” Dennis says, leaning in close. “Hey, buddy, you with me?”

“Mmm,” Charlie mumbles. “Oh hey, Dennis, yeah, I’m actually going over to your place soon. You should come too.” He’s still fiddling with the leaf; it irritates Dennis so he takes it from him. Charlie pouts, reaches out for it.

“Knock it off,” Dennis says, pushing Charlie’s hand away. “We’re already at my place, Charlie. What are you on?”

“Mmm,” Charlie says. “Little weed, maybe.”

“The only time ‘a little weed’ causes someone to look or act like _you_ is in an after-school-special or PSA...type...commercial.” Dennis rolls his eyes as Charlie stares at him with a plastered, unfocused grin. ‘Your brain on drugs’, indeed. Charlie doesn’t seem to have a response to that.

“Well, you’re not coming in like that, dude, so I don’t know what to tell you. You’ll only wreck my furniture and,” Dennis snorts, “frankly I’m kind of just not in the mood for...this, tonight, I’m just looking for a quiet night in and this looks like just about the precise opposite of that so...uh, I’m going to have to pass.”

Charlie bites at his lip, “Let’s just go somewhere else, then, man, let’s just leave.”

“No, Charlie, I’m gonna stay here, buddy, cuz this is the place...where I stay. And live. You can leave, though, uh, in fact you _should_ leave…” Dennis trails off. “Yeah. Goodbye, Charlie.”

Charlie blinks up dazedly at Dennis. He looks like he knows he’s being rejected, but he’s not sure why, and it’s that unsureness that’s making it hard for him to argue his cause. “Please, man? I’m feelin’ really, uh…sorta like...uhhh,” Charlie points to his own face, rolls his eyes wildly in his head, lolling his tongue out for effect, “And you’ve always been so good at calming me down, man, I just…”

He’s high as fuck and about as filthy as a person can be, but for a split-second he looks just sort of small and pitiful. “Please, Dennis?” Charlie says, and it’s the same look that gets Dennis every goddamn time.

Every _goddamn_ time.

Dennis sighs, stepping aside to clear the doorway. “Fuck it. Just don’t touch anything.”

//

Like any rational person would, he immediately steers Charlie into the bathroom.

Dennis has never hated his apartment layout more; with the only bathroom in the apartment being the master bath, he’s had people traipsing through his bedroom to use the bathroom the entire time he’s lived here, but he can’t say he’s ever had to worry about white footprints made from an unknown substance and occasional clumpy drops of what Dennis can only describe as ‘hopefully mud.’

After directing Charlie to stand still on a spot of empty tile, Dennis clears out the rugs, towels, robes....pretty much any item that Charlie could possibly end up getting whatever-the-fuck on that Dennis can’t just hose down or throw away after. Gathering it all up, he dumps it on his bedroom floor, leaving a towel tossed on his bed, which is _for_ Charlie, but isn’t going anywhere _near_ Charlie until he’s clean. Dennis is still feeling awfully talked into this whole situation, and that’s as charitable as he feels like being right at this very moment.

By the time he’s back in the bathroom, Charlie has managed to get muddy handprints all over Dennis’s mirror. Dennis grimaces.

Charlie’s touching his cheeks with both hands and then laying both hands on his reflected-back face in the mirror, back and forth, over and over. He’s moving, ducking, swerving; trying to dodge himself and move out of the way before he gets there but he of course catches his reflection every time. The handprints are _everywhere_ ; the coverage likely wouldn’t have been any better if Dennis had requested Charlie paint his mirror with mud using only his hands.

Dennis grabs a fistful of Charlie’s absurdly filthy shirt collar from the back and hauls him away from the mirror, dragging him like a scruffed kitten along the tile to stand in front of the bathtub, then spinning him around to face him, fuming. “What was the literal first thing I fucking said, Charlie?”

Charlie doesn’t answer. Dennis huffs. “The  _very first_ thing I said was don’t touch anything!”

“I wasn’t touching anything of _yours_ , Dennis,” Charlie protests. “I was touching my own face, and my reflection’s face.”

“Using _my_ ...!” Dennis starts, but he senses it’s a lost cause. Rather than arguing further, he leans around Charlie to start the water in the tub, cranking it all the way to hot so the water warms as quickly as possible. The plumbing in their building is shit; if he wants the skin-scalding clean he prefers he has to run the shower for over forty-five minutes for it to heat up all the way. There’s no way Charlie’s spending that much time in his apartment _this_ fucking filthy, though, so Charlie’s probably going to have to settle for the short version, which will get the water heated up to just-this-side-of-lukewarm. Honestly, Dennis would be frankly shocked if Charlie even noticed he was in water, as fucked as the kid is, but he still doesn’t want to just chuck him under a stream of ice. Because he’d probably squeal and wail about it and the complaining would bounce off the echoey walls of the bathroom and give Dennis a headache, of course.

So Dennis says, “Alright, wait just a second, but that should warm up pretty quick.” Charlie nods, seeming to understand even if he’s not quite meeting Dennis’s gaze, not quite seeming to see anything in this reality. “Okay, so I’ll step outside, you hand me your clothes and I’ll wash them for you, alright?” Another unfocused nod. Feeling like they’ve come to an understanding, Dennis steps outside the bathroom and waits.

He examines his fingernails - inspecting them, really, because he paints them a slightly different shade than his natural nail, a more flattering shade that makes his fingers look longer and thinner, and discovers it’s beginning to chip away slightly at the very tips of his middle and pointer finger on one hand. Probably from picking at the weed grinder. Dennis’s jaw shifts in irritation. He kind of hates painting his nails, he gets impatient and tries to put another coat on before it’s dry half the time, and it all turns into a gooey mess and he hates that, he _hates_ it, but the effect is kind of worth it. He’s caught people looking at his hands. He’s caught himself looking at his hands. He can’t stop looking at his hands right now.

Realizing he’s still kind of stoned and it’s been a minute, or eight, longer than he realized, Dennis knocks on the doorframe and calls out, “Hey, buddy, thought you were gonna hand me those clothes?”

“I’m trying!” Charlie shouts. “It’s stuck!”

Dennis furrows his brow, trying to picture what the situation on the other side of the door could possibly be. “Stuck on what?”

“What else? On me!” Charlie calls back.

Dennis stares at his bedroom floor, rubbing at the back of his neck, brow furrowing as he tries to discern what that could mean. “Uhhh, like you have something sticky on your skin, and your clothes are stuck to it?”

“No!” Charlie grunts in frustration. “Ah! Damn it! My body is just in the way!”

“Your body is in the…?” Pressing his forehead to the wood, Dennis mutters a few words, half prayer and half curse, before remarking, “Alright, Charlie, I’m coming back in to help.”

He takes a deep breath, preparing himself for what he might see, before he opens the door.

What he ends up seeing is Charlie tugging desperately on the front of his shirt, trying to rip it clear off his torso and failing. His hands are even more covered in mud now; some of the filth from the shirt must have transferred, but you certainly wouldn’t be able to tell from the state of the shirt that it had lost even a single speck of dust.

Dennis wordlessly walks over to him, gestures for him to lift his arms. Charlie tilts his head in confusion, not understanding the gesture. Dennis sighs, again, and grabs his hands with his own when he’s close enough to, keeping their laced fingers at shoulder level for a brief moment before leading Charlie to raise their joined hands high up in the air.

“Stay,” Dennis says, and releases him. Dennis seeks the hem of Charlie’s mud-caked shirt, winces slightly at the texture when he finds it but soldiers through. His fingers lightly brush Charlie’s stomach a couple times as he gathers the material into his hands; his skin is fever-warm but dry and even the slightest contact between Dennis’s long, slender fingers and Charlie’s hot skin makes Charlie immediately, visibly relax, to the point that his arms start to drift back down towards his sides.

“Ah-ah!” Dennis warns him wordlessly. Charlie snaps his arms all the way back up quickly, Dennis hums his approval. Charlie smiles.

Really starting to work on the shirt, it proves slightly more difficult than Dennis would have anticipated. While Charlie had originally intended “stuck” to mean that his shirt was unable to be torn clear off his body, so in other words just being a functional shirt, it turns out it’s also actually so mud-logged as to be adhered to his skin. It makes a loud, wet suction noise as Dennis peels it up, and he can only get it an inch or so before he has to readjust his grip, inevitably brushing Charlie’s warm, muddy skin repeatedly as he does so. He gets the shirt up to just below Charlie’s nipples before he realizes that Charlie’s arms are almost relaxed to his side at this point.

“Arms up, Charlie!” Dennis admonishes.

“Stop touching me then!” Charlie wails. “It’s too relaxing! You’re like a massage!”

“I am _barely_ touching you, Charlie,” Dennis states, “and let me be the first to tell you it _distinctly_ is not on purpose. I do not want to be within a hundred feet of you right now, quite frankly. You’re never exactly the cleanest person, but right you are almost _literally_ a walking mud monster!”

“Mmm, ‘s not all mud though,” Charlie slurs, going slightly unsteady on his feet as Dennis inadvertently skims a nipple. His eyes slip closed, then drearily blink back open. “Oof. I just didn’t know taking off a shirt had so much touching.”

“Yeah, it not all being mud is exactly what I was afraid of,” Dennis says, wrinkling his nose. “Did this shirt fit you before it got mud all over it, Charlie? How is it _this_ tight?”

“I can’t tell what shirt it is with all the mud on it,” Charlie admits. “It might not even be mine.”

Dennis huffs a breath of air out his nose and tries a different tactic, laying his hands directly onto Charlie’s chest and pushing upward on the bunched-up material, running the entire length of his hands, from the tip of his finger to the ball of his palm, up Charlie’s chest. The motion causes the shirt to make far more progress than simply grabbing and pulling on it; unfortunately it also causes Charlie to go absolutely boneless, collapsing into Dennis’s arms.

“Goddammit, Charlie!” Dennis yelps, shoving Charlie roughly off him just as soon as he’s sure Charlie hasn’t actually passed out. “Like I needed mud all over me!”

“Mmmm...uh?” Charlie stammers, barely catching himself by grabbing onto an empty towel rack attached to the wall behind him to steady himself. “Oh, uh, sorry, Dennis, my nipples are sem...um...stets…uh...sats...”

“Sensitive, yeah, caught that,” Dennis snaps, irritably undoing the buttons on his now-ruined shirt, pulling free from the garment with an urgency that would suggest it’s covered in _fire_ rather than mud, balling it up and chucking it angrily aside. He then grabs Charlie by the still-rolled-up shirt, both dragging him closer and pulling the shirt off roughly over his head in one sharp tug, causing Charlie to stumble back.

Charlie squeaks indignantly, again only just barely catching himself on the towel rack. “You don’t gotta be so rough, man,” Charlie says, blinking up at Dennis. His hair is sticking out ten times worse now, mussed up by the shirt. The shirt’s also smudged more mud on his face, especially the tip of his nose, and his cheeks are redder than ever.

Dennis swallows. “Right. Sorry. I just…” He looks at his shirt, in a heap on the floor. “You got mud on my shirt, I didn’t like that.”

“Not intentionally!” Charlie protests. “I’m delicate! I’m like a...flower!”

Dennis snorts, running a hand through his hair. “The only thing you and a flower have in common is a penchant for mud,” he says, over-pronouncing _penchant_ , pronouncing it like it’s a far more foreign-sounding word than it typically is, like somewhere around the _‘cha_ ’ Dennis channeled a Frenchman that’s gone by the time the T bounces off Dennis’s tongue, off the back of Dennis’s front teeth.

Charlie, now shirtless and looking extra bedraggled, stretches, hands up high, right where Dennis couldn’t get him to keep them before when he needed him to but now he’s doing of his own volition, and if that isn’t just so par for the course Dennis could scream. Charlie’s got a few clumps of mud drying into his chest hair, and sans shirt, the waistband of Charlie’s jeans becomes visible, and it becomes readily apparent that the mud-logged jeans are staggering under their own weight, dragging down along Charlie’s hips. Any underwear Charlie may or may not be wearing didn’t stand a chance at staying in place - they’re pulled down underneath the jeans, out of sight, provided they’re there at all.

Oh, right. And he’s got a goddamn _missile_ shoved down the front of his pants by the looks of it, straining against his zipper and upper thigh, but that honestly might not be new. Because, fine, alright, maybe Dennis kind of noticed it when Charlie was at the door. But a hard-on was just one of a long list of things that Dennis had noticed that were going on with Charlie, and wasn’t even close to the top on the list of the most concerning.

Charlie curls in on himself a little, like he feels Dennis looking. He bites at his lip a little sheepishly, his cheeks tinted slightly pink, but his eyes are locked on Dennis’s for the first time all night and in there Dennis is definitely seeing a hint of...something, there. Something, for sure.

Swallowing, Dennis pulls a wry smile and offers, “You want me to help you with your jeans too?”

Wordlessly, Charlie nods, shifts closer. He lifts his arms out of the way, folding his hands behind his head, the muscles in his upper arms bulging like he’s showing them off, but the look on his face is one of openness, of naivete and innocence. His glance flickers down to the waistband of his pants for a second and then raises quickly back up to Dennis’s face with that unreadable something even more present in his glassy eyes.

Dennis attributes the lightheaded dizziness to the weed and doesn’t fumble at all in getting the button of Charlie’s jeans undone. He feels dirt-caked metal against his fingertips, feels dirt-caked skin against his knuckles. He feels it when Charlie’s stomach flinches, goes abruptly tight as his breath hitches, the sound of it too close to Dennis’s ear with his head pitched down to focus on the task at hand.

The tab of the zipper is slippery, it takes Dennis a second to get a grip on it. Keeps losing it and having to take time to grab it again, more than long enough time to determine once and for all that the only thing Charlie’s got under his jeans is bare skin. Dennis tries not to focus too much on _what_ skin, exactly, he’s touching, but Charlie’s stomach keeps going abruptly hard and tight; he keeps gasping like the bathroom’s got an especially low oxygen supply. Dennis hears Charlie’s throat click as he swallows, hard, hears the wet slide of his tongue as Charlie licks his lips. His _own_ lips. _Obviously._

As soon as the zipper’s down, the destroyed denim goes slack, pooling around Charlie’s bare ankles with a soft rustling of heavy cloth. The water hitting the tile in the shower behind them sounds just like oil sizzling in a pan, and Dennis feels _hot._ The room is filling with steam now, the air is dense and _hot_ in Dennis’s lungs as he stands face to face with Charlie and tries to figure out when exactly the vibe in the room shifted to be... _this_ , because it feels like it’s always been there in the exact same way that Dennis feels completely blindsided by it.

“Um,” Dennis says, and he has to swallow before he says anything else because his voice is thick and raspy and Charlie’s eyes go wide meaning even being so high, he noticed. Dennis swallows hard. “Feels pretty warm in here, so, uh...” Charlie blinks, slowly. His lashes are long. Dennis doesn’t reach out and touch them. “So the shower’s probably ready!” Is he shouting? The shower hitting the tile sounds like white noise in his ears, like static. “Probably warm enough. Give, give me your clothes.”

Charlie glances down, the exact direction Dennis is adamantly refusing to look, and then looks back up at Dennis, biting his lip with the corners betraying a smile. If Dennis looked at someone like that, he knows exactly what he’d be wanting them to do, but Charlie isn’t Dennis, so the look doesn’t mean that. Probably.

Dennis swears under his breath and Charlie’s face falls a little bit, like he thinks it’s aimed at him. “Just give me your clothes, Charlie, so I can wash them!” Dennis snaps and now Charlie’s going to think even more that he’s mad but Dennis doesn’t care, he doesn’t care, he has to get out of here he has to…

A pile of stuff, mud and water on cotton and denim, is pushed into Dennis’s arms and as if propelled by the gentle force of it he stumbles out the door without another word, not even bothering to shut the door behind him. He continues on into the living room like his legs are on motors, going out of control, going of their own volition and they won’t stop until the backs of his shins connect with the couch almost painfully and he drops down onto it, the joint already back in his hand like it was slipped there by some benevolent spirit when he wasn’t paying attention.

His lips curl around the paper end of it and he pulls in a long, slow drag. He watches as the joint burns, burns unevenly, catching a little bit too much right at the seam, right where the paper’s folded over and burning a thin, angry line a bit too fast towards his mouth. He pulls in a hit, a sloppy, shitty hit, doing it the exact wrong way like he’s back in high school all over again - he feels the wrongness of it instantly, the smoke tickling at his soft palate, scratching at his throat. He ends up coughing half the hit right back out, but it’s enough to get a soothing heaviness curling around inside his skull.

The tray, the papers, the grinder, some loose pre-ground bud and a little baggie of intact green buds are all still sitting out on the table from earlier. Dennis pauses a moment, listening to the shower, the way the water sounds different, distorted, through the wall. Less like sizzling oil or TV static, more like the cheering of a sold-out sports arena, like crashing ocean waves. Charlie’s soft tenor comes in underneath, quiet and subdued, like he’s not sure he’s allowed to be singing. Dennis can’t catch the words, he’s not sure if the tender vibe he’s catching is just Charlie trying to keep his voice down, or...or what. Lit joint held tight between dry lips, Dennis pulls the tray onto his lap and starts rolling another one.

He pictures the smoke curling into his brain, pressing in like massaging fingers. He relaxes a little, leans back against the couch cushions. The panic gives way to confusion gives way to amusement. Because it’s funny, honestly, when he thinks about it. He has to stop rolling to pluck the joint from his lips so he can laugh at himself. Laugh at the situation. Because it’s funny, honestly. It’s a goddamn riot.

Because of course, of course, after years and years of perfecting his skills of seduction to guarantee his infallible ability to ensnare the absolute hottest of ladies, the most top tier sex partners in the entirety of Philly, _of fucking course_ Dennis’s mind is going to betray him and get him all flushed and desperate and wanting over Charlie _fucking_ Kelly.

And even better, honestly - and now Dennis is lighting the second joint, and he’s sucking on it like the joint is a straw in an especially _thick_ milkshake and Dennis really needs a sip of that milkshake because he is burning hot _,_ can’t you see, he’s _burning_ \- even better is the fact that if it were a hot lady, a top-tier sex partner who’d shown up at his front door covered in mud (maybe from wrestling another hot lady in said mud, maybe she’s brought the other lady, maybe there are two of them, maybe the mud’s all they’re wearing…), if it were that situation Dennis would know how to handle that. Dennis would tape the lock on his bathroom door, Dennis would take the girls’ clothes (if they were wearing any at all, which they might not be, like Charlie wasn’t wearing anything under his jeans) and then he’d say he needed something out of the bathroom and come in and they’d be cleaning each other in the shower (naked and soapy and together and if Dennis had stayed, would Charlie had asked Dennis to wash him?) and Dennis would stay and watch (he bets Charlie would have at least let him do that, right, watched him) and they’d have to let him because Dennis taped the lock but more importantly because Dennis was doing them a favor and (that’s only fair Dennis helped him so he gets to watch that’s only fair) _that’s only fair_ …

Dennis shifts on the couch, swallowing, hard. The _best_ part, he muses bitterly, is of course the stupid, stupid fact that if it were someone he could be proud of having naked in his apartment, rather than a veneer of begrudging acceptance hiding this twisting, churning, curdling mixture of arousal and shame, he’d know exactly what to do, but this is Charlie so of course Dennis is afraid of, you know, of _screwing this up_ or whatever. And not even screwing it up in the usual sense, where Mac runs in or the girl’s mom calls or the girl says she doesn’t have a license but then it falls out of her bag and Dennis finds out she’s fourteen, or whatever. Not in the way where the consequence of screwing it up just means not having sex.

 _Really_ screwing it up, screwing _everything_ up, because Dennis keeps having this image flashing through his mind of reaching out to touch Charlie, of feeling the softness of his skin, smoothing his fingertips over that pattern of freckles on his shoulder only to catch the look in Charlie’s eye and recoil backwards as he sees repulsion, and anger, and wild-eyed disgusted _panic._ And it makes Dennis feel like he swallowed a bowling ball, and his heart’s going to beat out of his chest, and no matter what he thought he felt, no matter what those feelings made him think, there’s a part of him that knows he’s not going to be able to go through with it, because if Charlie looks at him like that he doesn’t think he’s ever going to be able to look at Charlie again.

Dennis swallows. His skin feels kind of cold, kind of numb. He feels like something’s shifted, something important, but he feels like maybe for once in his life he’s made a good, responsible decision. He takes another long drag of the joint Mac would absolutely murder him over smoking in the apartment, and decides that maybe he doesn’t have to break absolutely every single rule possible tonight. Decides maybe he ought to just finish this joint, throw Charlie’s clothes in the laundry, send the little Dirtgrub off to Mac’s bed for the night and then lock himself in his own room to spend the rest of the night alone, in peace, just like he always wanted.

He makes the decision to do all that, and maybe he would have, if he wasn’t startled once again by Charlie banging on one of the walls of his apartment. This time it’s the bathroom wall, the shared wall between the couch and the shower. Dennis hadn’t even considered that there was but a wall between himself and Charlie, but that was the exact situation.

“Dennis!” Charlie calls, muffled by water and wall. “Come here!”

Dennis swallows, glances down at the half-smoked joint in his hand. Thinks about how he needed to smoke at least the rest of it, and maybe three more, before he would’ve been ready to deal with any of this, but he’s pretty sure Charlie’s not going to let him ignore him for the time it’s going to take to smoke three and a half more joints.

“Dennis!” Charlie calls again, banging aggressively on the wall. “Dude! I need you!”

Sighing smoke out of his nose, Dennis grabs the lighter with one hand and pushes himself up off the couch with his other. The joint still dangling from his lips, Dennis calls out, “I’m coming!”

The door to the bathroom is still wide open. From here, the water sounds like sizzling oil again. Steam fills the bedroom, already starts to fill Dennis’s lungs.

Which is a problem, because Dennis is _burning_.

//

**Author's Note:**

> im so sorry, i had to split this into two parts because i'm running into some serious writers block on this so please leave a comment if you read this, i need the motivation to continue writing!!!
> 
> or in dee's words: tell me that was good tell me im good tell me im good tell me im good tell me im good tell me im good tell me im good tell me im good tell me im good tell me im good tell me im good tell me im good tell me im
> 
> (find me on tumblr: psychedelic-iridescent.tumblr.com)


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